Sword Art Online Progressive 2

  But the fact that NPCs were visually indistinguishable from players and the fact that this was an experiment in a totally new genre forced their hand, and they eventually added the code. The fact that players could find young female NPCs and grope them to their heart’s content in the full-dive setting ran afoul of the game ratings agency’s ethical standards. I couldn’t help but wonder what made that different from being able to PK someone, but that had always been a case of different standards. The interview this information came from was with the Argus staff rather than Kayaba, but they probably had their own bone to pick with the real-life factors forcing their decision.

  At any rate, the addition of the anti-harassment code to SAO was meant to curb inappropriate actions toward NPCs of the opposite sex, not players.

  But in that case, how would the system react if an NPC chose to barge into the bath with the player? Would the code stay put as long as the player didn’t touch the NPC, or would I run afoul of it just for looking at her with all gear removed? Or was this situation so far beyond the regular bounds of the system that it would ignore everything entirely?

  My brain was at its maximum capacity—I could imagine white smoke issuing from the top of my head.

  “G-go right ahead. I’m just getting out,” I said. That was the proper social response, regardless of how the system worked. There was just one problem: I had all of my clothing removed and couldn’t leave the bathtub. Some male players thought nothing of their virtual nakedness and changed outfits in the middle of town without hesitation, but I sadly did not share their courage.

  I hung to the rim of the tub, waiting for the moment Kizmel looked away to emerge.

  “I see. Thank you,” the elf woman said, turning to the washing station on the right side of the tent and pressing the magic clasp.

  With the same familiar jingle from the other day, the armor and cape vanished with a flash of light. She was wearing a single silk undersuit. The sight of her brown skin peeking through the fine, sheer black lace put me under a stun effect, but I’d seen that before. I tried to maintain focus and leaped from the tub when she turned away. I had my menu open before I even hit the ground, instantly popping the UNDERWEAR button. The security of fabric around my waist gave me the courage to continue to my shirt and pants—

  Jingle.

  The beautiful, dangerous sound rang out again. I automatically looked to the right and saw the bodysuit disappearing from Kizmel in a shower of light.

  “Nbwha…”

  A nonsense syllable escaped my lips, and I lost my balance in midair. Naturally, I stumbled upon landing and fell into a Tumble status, landing with a pathetic splat on the wood deck. Kizmel started to turn around.

  “What’s wrong, Kiri—”

  “N-n-n-nothing! It’s nothing!”

  “Oh? Be careful; the bathing area can be slippery,” she said, like a mother scolding a clumsy child. She turned back to the wall just before the point of no return and sat down on a wooden bathing chair. Reaching into one of the small urns lined up on the counter, she removed a thick liquid and spread it on her skin. A sudden surge of white suds flowed forth, coating her bare back.

  I wasn’t just sitting there, staring; I crawled toward the exit on all fours rather than wait for the Tumble to subside. The problem was that my wild jumping had left the wooden deck slick and slippery, slowing my progress. I had gotten about six feet across the room when…

  “Since you’re here, would you do me the favor of washing my back?” came the knight’s request from on high.

  In the end, I was not sent to Blackiron Palace for inappropriate contact, but I didn’t know if that had anything to do with Kizmel’s unique nature within the game. The bathing tent had its own brush for scrubbing, which meant I didn’t need to touch her skin directly.

  The fact that I did not refuse to sit on the chair behind the knight and scrub her sudsy back with the brush was most certainly not out of the desire to test the limits of the anti-harassment code. It was Kizmel’s confession that she hadn’t had anyone to scrub her back since Tilnel’s soul had been called back to the Holy Tree.

  The death of Kizmel’s sister and the very war between the forest and dark elves were nothing more than a background setting that had been applied to Kizmel. It was impossible to imagine NPCs going about their routines and actually fighting and dying in combat where no player could see. It was the old quandary about the sound of the tree falling alone in the forest. The memories that Kizmel spoke of at the graveyard to the rear of the camp had been manufactured for her sake.

  But could I truly guarantee that my memories of fourteen years and seventy-two days were all true? What if my existence was a program just like Kizmel, and it had been loaded on the first day of Sword Art Online, with all my memories of the “real world” being nothing but fiction? How could I know that wasn’t the case?

  I wasn’t truly grappling with that line of thought. But there was a part of me that wanted to consider my memories and Kizmel’s memories to be fundamentally equal.

  My thoughts raced through these philosophical topics as my arms dutifully scrubbed back and forth with the fine fur brush.

  “…I have been plagued by strange dreams of late,” Kizmel suddenly said.

  “D…dreams?”

  Though I didn’t say it out loud, I was shocked by the idea of an NPC having a dream. For a brief instant, my hands stopped scrubbing.

  “Wh-what kind?” I asked, resuming the cleaning.

  “Well…I believe they are dreams about the time you came to my aid when I was fighting the forest elf knight four days ago. The strange thing is, what happens next is totally unlike what really happened.”

  “…”

  I continued to scrub her back in silence.

  “First, you are dressed differently. And your partner is not the same. It is not Asuna, but a group of unfamiliar men…”

  “Oh? Strange, I haven’t been in a par…in a group with anyone other than Asuna in ages.”

  “Yes…but those are the more subtle differences. In the dream, you and your companions fight with me against the forest elf. But, if you’ll overlook my rudeness, your skills are not what they are now. We cannot stand firm against the forest elf. One falls, then another…and in order to save your lives, I unleash all of the protections of the Holy Tree, which gives elvenkind life. The enemy is slain, but I perish as well. I fall to the ground, and you look down upon me with sadness in your eyes…Every time I have the dream, your clothes and your companions are different…but your face is always the same at the end…”

  “Ahh,” I murmured.

  My eyes then went wide, and I silently gaped.

  That dream.

  Was it…

  Memories of the SAO beta test?

  I was so shocked, I nearly asked Kizmel this question, knowing she couldn’t possibly understand it.

  The only thing that prevented me from doing so was a steely voice that piped up from beyond the hanging entrance flap of the tent.

  “Kirito, how long are you going to keep me waiting? It’s been nearly ten minutes.”

  It was, of course, the fencer who had gone off to the dining tent before I bathed.

  Didn’t I tell her I was only going to take three minutes? I recalled, far too late to do anything about it. Beyond that, the overwhelming danger of the situation—Asuna standing outside, separated by only a flap of cloth, while I scrubbed the back of a totally naked Kizmel inside—left me unable to formulate a response.

  I sat there frozen, brush clutched in my hands, and heard a more menacing statement this time.

  “Well, say something. I’ll give you three more seconds before I walk in there.”

  She was clearly angry about being stood up for dinner. The dining tent’s menu was probably seasoned whitefish (Asuna’s favorite) or the rooty brown stew. Oddly enough, though the elves in this world didn’t cut down living trees, they also weren’t vegetarians. I could have sworn I’d read a story once about an
elven heroine who didn’t eat meat.

  But this wasn’t the time for distractions. At the two-point-eight-second mark, I summoned my courage and sucked in a breath.

  “S-sorry! I’ll be out soon, just give me one more minute!”

  The flap was already lifted several inches at that point, but it dropped back to its hanging position.

  “…I’ll give you two minutes out of pity. I’ll order your food, too, so stop by if you want to eat.”

  Her footsteps trod away. I let out my breath in relief. When Kizmel spoke, there was a jovial, teasing note in her voice.

  “Do you human warriors not normally bathe together?”

  “N-no, especially not men and women together. What about elves?”

  “The knight’s manor at the palace has separated bathing quarters, but this is a battleground. We cannot expect luxuries.”

  “I see. Um…can you tell me more about that dream some other time?”

  Perhaps Kizmel did possess memories of the beta within her. I was fascinated and deadly curious, but I felt I needed to process this information before I knew what to ask her.

  She leaned just a little bit toward me and muttered, “Yes. I, too, would like to know what that dream means…”

  It felt like she was talking more to herself than me.

  Eleven forty-five at night.

  My eyes popped open at an alarm that only I could hear, and I waited for my senses to fully return before sitting up.

  The lamp hanging off the center pole of the tent and the fires of the heater below were both extinguished, but there was enough moonlight coming through the exhaust vent in the roof to see by. In the center of the pelt-covered floor, Kizmel and Asuna lay close together, fast asleep.

  NPCs acted like players in that they went to sleep at night, but in their case, they simply closed their eyes and went inactive according to the rules of their programming. At least, that’s what I’d always assumed—and perhaps it was true, for NPCs other than Kizmel.

  But six hours ago, she told me that she had a mysterious dream every night.

  At that point, the possibility that someone in the real world could be role-playing as the dark elf knight disappeared entirely. Bringing up the topic of the beta test destroyed the illusion of a simple NPC, and my appearance now was completely different from the beta days. Someone on the development side would know that, and they wouldn’t say something like “Your face is always the same at the end.”

  So assuming Kizmel was a true NPC, what did that dream mean to her? The function of dreams was still largely unexplained as far as humanity knew it. Did it mean that Kizmel’s host program was still active and calculating while her process slept?

  I challenged the “Jade Key” quest three times in the beta, and I remembered seeing her die in each case. Was that data accumulating in her system, and her program was simply trying to find some kind of logic to this memory that should not exist?

  Did she remember the beta because she was an exceptional NPC?

  Or had she gained her exceptional nature because those memories still existed within her?

  A gentle night breeze through the gaps in the entrance flap ruffled my hair. I recalled the day this game of death began.

  I left my first and only friend, Klein, back in the Town of Beginnings, raced through the open fields, and didn’t stop until I reached the village of Horunka deep in the forest. I was heading straight for the quest that would reward me with an Anneal Blade—the weapon I still used today.

  The quest was offered by the mother of a sickly child and required me to hunt plant monsters for a special herb. In the midst of that quest, I ran across another former beta tester for the first time. He invited me into a party, and when we’d collected enough herbs for one of us to turn in the quest, he tried to kill me with a monster trap.

  Instead, I just barely survived and returned to the village to give the mother her herbs. When I did the same quest in the beta, I took my sword and raced off for the next place of interest, but for some reason, this time I watched her prepare the medicine and followed her into the child’s room next door.

  As I watched the sick little child NPC named Agatha slowly recover thanks to the potion, I recalled how I had cared for my sister when she was sickly. The emotions that had been building up inside of me since I learned that I was trapped in a game of death suddenly burst forth, and I wept into the blankets of the bed. Agatha reached over, looking concerned, and rubbed my head, over and over and over until I stopped…

  “…”

  I took another deep breath and pushed the memories out of my mind.

  Kizmel and Asuna were lined up together, fast asleep like sisters. After bathing and eating, we went back out into the forest and, with Kizmel’s help, completed all the quests we picked up in Zumfut. We’d have to turn them in later, but after a solid four hours fighting spiders, treants, and wolves, they must have been exhausted. Did NPCs even have a fatigue stat, though?

  I could have stood to sleep some more myself, but there was another mission to be undertaken tonight. I crawled along the floor, slipping out of the entrance with a minimum of disturbance, and took another deep breath.

  That lungful of crisp, cold air shook me fully awake, and I snuck away through the night camp. I passed by the now-familiar night guards with a wave and headed through the canyon into the forest for the third time today.

  The Forest of Wavering Mists was dangerous at night; when the heavy mists rolled in, there was nothing to see but a blue-gray haze. I had a solid grasp of the terrain by now, though. I proceeded through the forest, mindful of the presence of monsters, and in less than ten minutes, I reached the familiar staircase leading back down to the second floor.

  Bathed in pale moonlight, the stone structure appeared to be empty, but as I drew nearer, a silhouette melted out of otherwise thin air from the shadow of one of the pillars. This player’s Hiding skill was on par with Kizmel and her cloak of invisibility.

  The person I was meeting grinned, three painted whiskers crinkling beneath her heavy hood.

  “Seven seconds late, Kii-boy.”

  “Sorry. Blame it on the train driver.”

  Her hood shook ruefully at my earnest attempt at humor.

  “I can sell you some better jokes, if you’re looking to improve.”

  “No thanks, I’ll manage with what I’ve got. I hate to rush you, but…did you learn anything about what I asked for?”

  “Always the impatient one, you are. The hastiest rats are the ones that don’t make it back to the hole.”

  My grinning guest hopped up onto a collapsed pillar nearby and crossed her legs. I took a position leaning against the pillar facing her.

  Argo the Rat was the first, and best, information agent in Aincrad. I’d known her for a long time (if a month counted as “long”) but barely knew anything about her personally. I was pretty sure she was a girl, pretty sure she was somewhere between her late teens or early twenties, and pretty sure she was also a beta tester. She collected information from her beta experience, as well as nuggets bought from me and other testers, and compiled them into her own series of strategy guides that she sold through NPC item shops throughout the game. Most important of all to remember was her motto: Any information with a price would be sold.

  That meant that if I asked Argo to sell me personal information, like her height, weight, favorite foods, skill layout, and so on, she would do it…as long as I paid the price.

  Fortunately, the cost of the information I wanted in this case was quite reasonable. I pulled a five-hundred-col coin out of my coat pocket and flipped it to her, which she caught nimbly between two fingers. The coin danced along her fingers before disappearing entirely.

  “Thankee. I’ll tell ya what I know so far.” The grin on her whiskered face disappeared, and she continued in a low voice, “Seems like there’s only one player who joined up with Lind’s Dragon Knights Brigade since reaching the third floor. His name’s Morte, he uses a one
-handed sword, and he never takes off his metal coif, even in town…That’s all I got for ya.”

  “Morte,” I repeated, thinking that it sounded like a type of candy.

  A man wearing a coif. That had to be the man I saw in Lind’s team of five the other day. He was probably a beta tester like me and was feeding Lind information on the campaign quest…

  Suddenly, I recognized a contradiction there.

  “Wait…but at the last strategy meeting, which I assume you were watching, the DKB still had eighteen members, same as during the last boss fight. So if Morte joined, does that mean one person dropped out? And was it voluntary or forced?”

  Argo waved my suspicions away.

  “Nope, the eighteen at the meeting were the same from the boss battle.”

  “…Do you know all the names and faces of the DKB?”

  “I wouldn’t be much of an informant if I didn’t. Same goes for the ALS.”

  “It was silly of me to ask,” I said, raising my hands in surrender. “So…Morte just joined up on the third floor but wasn’t present at the meeting. And the reason for that is…”

  “A mystery to me, ’fraid to say.”

  “You’d have to ask him or Lind to know why, I guess.”

  I played back my recollection of the strategy meeting in Zumfut three days ago. But I couldn’t remember the faces of the other seventeen dressed in blue. Part of it was that I sat at the very top row of the stadium-style seating, so I could only see the backs of the others present. And halfway through the meeting, most of my mind power was spent worrying about the imminent explosion of anger from Asuna.

  Still, it had to be a problem that, forty days after this game started, we were still putting our lives in the hands of other players whose names or faces we couldn’t even recall.

  I wasn’t going to get into the business of selling information anytime soon, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to put more effort into remembering people. It just wasn’t a skill that came naturally to me.